Best Brent Warner Podcasts (2025)

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Novel Approaches: ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ by Thomas Hardy 13:39

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11h ago13:39

13:39

After drunkenly selling his wife and child at auction, a young Michael Henchard resolves to live differently – and does so, skyrocketing from impoverished haytrusser to mayor of his adoptive town. Every unexpected disaster and sudden reversal in The Mayor of Casterbridge stems from its opening, in a plot which draws as much from realist fiction as …

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Next Year on Close Readings: Realism, Nature, Narrative Poems and a history of London 16:41

19m ago16:41

16:41

We’re pleased to announce our four new Close Readings series starting in January next year: ‘Who’s Afraid of Realism?’ with James Wood and guests ‘Nature in Crisis’ with Meehan Crist and Peter Godfrey-Smith ‘Narrative Poems’ with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford ‘London Revisited’ with Rosemary Hill and guests Bonus Series: 'The Man Behind the Curtain’ w…

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Break Free from Your Comfort Zone // Wayne Williams 47:14

3d ago47:14

47:14

What happens when decades of leadership, loss, grace, and growth collide into a life lived fully alive? In this episode, we sit down with our friend Wayne Williams—entrepreneur, rancher, long-time Trueface partner, and a man who has walked with Jesus through both mountaintops and valleys. We explore Wayne’s journey from leading a global company thr…

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The DAVID MOVIE: Director Brent Dawes on an epic family feature 30 years in the making. 1:06:15

4h ago1:06:15

1:06:15

This December 19th, DAVID, the Biblical epic from Sunrise Animation Studios, will be hitting theatres! In this first episode of the new season, host Julia Smuts Louw speaks with Brent Dawes about the equally epic journey it took to bring this labour of love to life. Join us to hear how the team wrestled with bringing scripture to a modern audience …

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Love and Death: Thom Gunn and Paul Muldoon 17:36

5d ago17:36

17:36

Thom Gunn’s career as an elegist was tied closely to the onset of the Aids epidemic in the 1980s, during which he saw many of his friends die. Despite loosening his early formalism after absorbing the work of the New American Poets, Gunn’s vision of the poet was not as a confessional diarist but rather a careful stylist of well-wrought verse drawin…

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S7E08 - What Can Google Do to Protect Education? 28:50

5h ago28:50

28:50

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Canvas, and many more have positioned themselves as solutions to education problems, but they're making very few moves to protect what we know about the learning process? It wouldn't be hard for them to make things work in much more pedagogically sound ways, but they seem to be uninterested in doing much beyond the…

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DIESOL 130 - A Very DIESOL Thanksgiving 24:20

6h ago24:20

24:20

Research shows that finding things to be grateful for actually releases dopamine and serotonin (the happy chemicals!) in the brain, which means more calmness during difficult times, resiliency, a stronger will to survive and thrive, and overall groundedness. This means we can make better decisions under stress, and who doesn't want to be better at …

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin 14:03

12d ago14:03

14:03

When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese translations. The huge and loyal readership among children and older readers that she built during her lifetime has only grown since her death, as has recognition of her work as ‘serious’ literature. …

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'The Sovereignty of Good' by Iris Murdoch 13:55

19d ago13:55

13:55

Imagine a woman setting herself the task of liking her son’s choice of wife. At first she finds her daughter-in-law unbearable, but through the effort of seeing her clearly and justly she comes to accept and even appreciate the younger woman. For Iris Murdoch this is an example of moral labour, the struggle to achieve virtue that is understood intu…

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Stop Trying to Be a "Good Christian" // David Gregory 40:49

15d ago40:49

40:49

What if the hardest thing about following Jesus isn’t doing more—but learning to receive? In this episode, we sit down with author David Gregory to explore the mystery of grace and what it really means to live out of our union with Christ. David shares his journey from striving to be a “good Christian” to discovering the freedom of Christ living th…

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S7E7 - When the Cloud Crashes: Teaching Through Tech Outages 28:24

25d ago28:24

28:24

Millions of people, including teachers and students, were affected by the recent outage of AWS as it took almost all EdTech, including Canvas, out of commission. While we may not collectively learn not to put all of our eggs in one basket, we can individually prepare ourselves for when this (inevitably) happens again. Listen in for ideas on how to …

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DIESOL 129 - When Knowing Too Much Holds You Back 30:38

28d ago30:38

30:38

We tend to think expertise is always an advantage, but what if knowing too much can actually hold you back? In this episode, Ixchell & Brent explore the research showing that experts can struggle with creative problem-solving in ways beginners don't. Discover why well-worn mental pathways can become traps, how automaticity makes it harder to explai…

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Novel Approaches: ‘Kidnapped’ by Robert Louis Stevenson 17:06

26d ago17:06

17:06

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped began life serialised in a children’s magazine, but its sophistication and depth won the lifelong admiration of Henry James. Set in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite rising, Kidnapped follows young lowlander David Balfour’s flight across the Highlands with the rebel Alan Breck Stewart. In Stevenson’s hands, a str…

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Love and Death: Elegies for Poets by Auden, Arnold and Schuyler 15:01

1M ago15:01

15:01

When poets elegise other poets, the results are often more about self-scrutiny and analysis of the nature of poetry than about grief. Matthew Arnold commented on his elegy for Arthur Hugh Clough, ‘Thyrsis’ (1865), that ‘one has the feeling that not enough is said about Clough in it.’ In his elegy for W.B. Yeats (1939), Auden insists that ‘poetry ma…

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Go Deep, Not Wide: Why the Church Must Rethink Discipleship // Brian Mosley 39:59

1M ago39:59

39:59

What if true discipleship means going deeper, not wider? In this conversation with our friend Brian Mosley, president of RightNow Media, we explore what it looks like to lead, steward, and discern with courage in seasons of transition. From his family’s three-generation journey of ministry to his bold shift from DVDs to streaming, Brian shares how …

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S7E6 - What's New in Zoom? (Fall 2025 Edition) 26:54

1M ago26:54

26:54

It's been a while since we've looked at Zoom updates, and there have been a LOT recently! If you've gotten into a rut with the ways you use Zoom, listen in to hear some of the new features that might be useful for you and your students or colleagues! Show notes: www.TheHigherEdTechPodcast.comBy Tim VanNorman & Brent Warner

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DIESOL 128 - 13 Scary Halloween Ideas You Can Use Right Away 31:50

1M ago31:50

31:50

Halloween classroom activities don't have to be boring. We've got 13 ideas that are actually going to make your students want to learn - from storytelling twists that'll get everyone engaged to activities that go way beyond just putting on a costume. In this episode, we're breaking down creative approaches that work across different language levels…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter 14:59

1M ago14:59

14:59

J.G. Ballard and Angela Carter were friends and co-conspirators in their witness to the postwar world and the liberation movements of the 1960s. Both were scathing in their antipathy towards the polite novels of manners and empire that still dominated English readers’ appreciation and expectations. Pioneers in the liminal spaces between literary an…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Fall' by Albert Camus 15:49

2M ago15:49

15:49

Never trust anyone who tries to be ethically pure. This is the message of Albert Camus’s short novel La Chute (The Fall), in which a retired French lawyer tells a stranger in a bar in Amsterdam about a series of incidents that led to a profound personal crisis. The self-described ‘judge-penitent’ had once thought himself to be morally irreproachabl…

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The Hidden Obstacles to Your Breakthrough // Marcus Warner 43:27

1M ago43:27

43:27

Why do we get stuck in the same struggles year after year—even as Christians longing for freedom? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Marcus Warner, president of Deeper Walk International, to unpack why so many of us stall out in our spiritual growth and how we can move toward real breakthrough. Together, we explore the “five engines” that drive …

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DIESOL 127 - Open Educational Resources in English Language Teaching 30:27

1M ago30:27

30:27

In Episode 127 we're exploring Open Educational Resources (OER), an affordable, customizable alternative to pricey textbooks. We'll dive into what OER is, benefits of an OER, how and why Brent is building his own OER, and more. OER isn't without its challenges. Designing well and integrating activities can be tricky, as Brent explains. How can a te…

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Novel Approaches: ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ by Henry James 14:38

2M ago14:38

14:38

In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James borrows from Eliot, Austen, folktales and potboilers, but ‘the thing that he took from nowhere was Isabel Archer’. James transformed the 19th-century novel through his evocation of Isabel, a woman who wants and suffers in a profoundly new (and American) way. Deborah Friedell and Colm Toíbín join Tom to discuss…

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S7E05 - Browser Bots are Doing the Homework 26:17

1M ago26:17

26:17

Agentic AI is coming hard-baked into browsers, and it's absolutely frictionless to have it complete homework. Brent & Tim discuss Google's (NOT paused) Homework Helper and Perplexity's Comet browser as examples of ways AI companies are proactively dismantling the learning process while claiming to support students. This is a bit of a dark one, but …

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Love and Death: 'Surge' by Jay Bernard and 'In Nearby Bushes' by Kei Miller 16:07

2M ago16:07

16:07

Jay Bernard’s 'Surge' and Kei Miller’s 'In Nearby Bushes', both published in 2019, address acts of violence whose victims were not directly known to the writers: in Surge, the deaths of thirteen Black teenagers in the New Cross Fire of 1981; in Miller’s poem, a series of rapes and murders in Jamaica. Both can be seen as collective elegies, interlea…

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Stop Fixing—Empathy Is Real Love // Bill & Kristi Gaultiere 40:36

2M ago40:36

40:36

What does it really mean to live in the “easy yoke” of Jesus? In this conversation with our friends Bill and Kristi Gaultiere, we explore how empathy, grace, and slow faithfulness transform our everyday walk with God. Together, we unpack their decades of counseling, ministry, and personal growth—learning what it looks like to move through walls in …

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Fiction and the Fantastic: ‘The Hearing Trumpet’ by Leonora Carrington 16:31

2M ago16:31

16:31

Leonora Carrington was a prodigious artist closely associated with major surrealists of the 1930s. Though only sporadically in print until recently, her writing has helped cement her cult status, not least The Hearing Trumpet (1974). Before her family consign her to an old-age facility, nonagenarian Marian Leatherby is gifted a hearing trumpet with…

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S7E04 - AI Announcements in the California Community Colleges 26:31

2M ago26:31

26:31

There are a lot of initiatives happening in California and the California Community Colleges have cannonballed into the pool with summits, initiatives, and partnerships all over the place. Tim & Brent discuss the most recent announcements and what they might mean for faculty, staff, and admin up and down the state. Show notes at www.TheHigherEdTech…

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Conversations in Philosophy: 'The Ethics of Ambiguity' by Simone de Beauvoir 15:44

3M ago15:44

15:44

At the heart of human existence is a tragic ambiguity: the fact that we experience ourselves both as subject and object, internal and external, at the same time, and can never fully inhabit either state. In her 1947 book, Simone de Beauvoir addresses the ethical implications of this uncertainty and the ‘agonising evidence of freedom’ it presents, a…

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DIESOL 126 - Reflective Teaching with the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast (Part 2) 44:05

3M ago44:05

44:05

We're teaming up for a shared episode with the Anna and Shè from the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast to talk about the what reflective teaching is and how to start finding ways to incorporate it into your work. This is part two of a two-part experimental mini-series, continuing where we left of and moving into conversations about practical strategies t…

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Leadership Is Formed in the Wilderness // Lindy Black 46:45

3M ago46:45

46:45

What if the most important leadership lessons aren’t learned on a stage, but in the wilderness, through pruning, weakness, and limitation? In this conversation with Lindy Black, we explore how God shapes leaders from the inside out. With decades of experience in the Navigators and Trueface, Lindy shares her own journey of discovering her gifting, r…

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Novel Approaches: ‘The Last Chronicle of Barset’ by Anthony Trollope 17:07

3M ago17:07

17:07

Trollope enthusiasts Tom Crewe and Dinah Birch say they could have chosen any one of his 47 novels for this episode, so it’s no wonder Elizabeth Bowen called him ‘the most sheerly able of the Victorian novelists’. They settled on The Last Chronicle of Barset: a model example of Anthony Trollope’s gift for comedy, pathos, social commentary and maste…

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S7E03 - Planning for Transitions 28:46

3M ago28:46

28:46

Tim and Brent zoom out a bit to look at some of the things you might consider when making a transition. Tim shares some of his approaches to moving into management and the areas he had to consider as he made the change, and the parallels to teaching new classes or working with new groups of students. Show notes: www.TheHigherEdTechPodcast.com…

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DIESOL 125 - Reflective Teaching with the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast 39:01

3M ago39:01

39:01

We're teaming up for a shared episode with the Anna and Shè from the Teacher Think-Aloud Podcast to talk about the what reflective teaching is and how to start finding ways to incorporate it into your work. This episode goes deep - far beyond thinking about your lesson and moving into transformative teaching for dedicated educators. Listen in for a…

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Love and Death: ‘Poems of 1912-13’ by Thomas Hardy 14:13

3M ago14:13

14:13

Without Emma Gifford, we might never have heard of Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s first wife was instrumental in his decision to abandon architecture for a writing career, and a direct influence – possibly collaborator – on his early novels. Their marriage, initially passionate, defied family expectations and class barriers, but by the time of Emma’s death,…

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Exhaustion Isn't Faithfulness // Nathan LaGrange 48:04

3M ago48:04

48:04

What if the life Jesus invites us into is less about what we do for Him and more about simply being with Him? In this episode, we sit down with our new friend Nathan LaGrange, Executive Director of Oasis Rest International, to explore how leaders—and all of us—can move from exhaustion and performance into rhythms of rest, renewal, and presence with…

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Fiction and the Fantastic: Stories by Jorge Luis Borges 13:55

3M ago13:55

13:55

Jorge Luis Borges was a librarian with rock star status, a stimulus for magical realism who was not a magical realist, and a wholly original writer who catalogued and defined his own precursors. It’s fitting that he was fascinated by paradoxes, and his most famous stories are fantasias on themes at the heart of this series: dreams, mirrors, recursi…

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S7E02 - Peer Reviews in Canvas and Beyond 26:05

3M ago26:05

26:05

Group assignments and peer reviews great, but it's not always clear how to get things going on a digital platform. What are the options to make useful peer reviews in Canvas? We're looking into it in this episode of the HigherEdTech Podcast! Show Notes: www.TheHigherEdTechPodcast.comBy Tim VanNorman & Brent Warner